Moses Isserles, the son of a well-to-do Kahal elder in Cracow, became prominent in the rabbinical world early in life. He occupied the post of a member of the Jewish communal court in his native city, and stood at the head of the yeshibah. This combination of scholarly and practical activities prompted him to delve deep in the existing rabbinical codes, and he found, as a result of his investigation, that they were not exhaustive, and were in need of amplification. Isserles was not even satisfied with the thoroughgoing elaboration of Jewish law which had been undertaken by his Palestinian contemporary Joseph Caro. When, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Caro's comprehensive commentary on the Code _Turim_,[89] entitled _Beth-Yoseph_ ("House of Joseph"), appeared, Isserles composed a commentary on the same code under the name _Darkhe Moshe_ ("Ways of Moses"), in which he considerably enlarged the legal material collected there, drawing from sources which Caro had left out of consideration. When, a few years later, the latter published his own code, under the name of _Shulhan Arukh_ ("The Dressed Table"), Isserles called attention to the fact that its author, being a Sephardic Jew, had failed in many cases to utilize the investigations of the rabbinic authorities among the Ashkenazim, and had left out of consideration the local religious customs, or _minhagim_, which were current among various groups of German-Polish Jewry. These omissions were carefully noted and supplied by Isserles. He supplemented the text of the _Shulhan Arukh_ by a large number of new laws, which he had framed on the basis of the above-mentioned popular customs or of the religious and legal practice of the Ashkenazic rabbis. Caro's code having been named by the author "The Dressed Table," Isserles gave his supplements thereto the title "Table-cloth" (_Mappa_).[90] In this supplemented form the _Shulhan Arukh_ was introduced, as a code of Jewish rabbinic law, into the religious and everyday life of the Polish Jews. The first edition of this combined code of Caro and Isserles appeared in Cracow in 1578, followed by numerous reprints, which testify to the extraordinary popularity of the work.